A childhood friend of mine once returned home on a bitter winter's evening to discover that he had accidentally left the window open and his gerbil was lying prone, motionless and decidedly stiff. Convinced that the critter was suffering from a severe, though not irreversible, form of pneumonia, he decided that the best way to resuscitate it was a short spell in the microwave. The resultant explosion unambiguously resolved the question of the rodent's survival.

Pets provoke an uneasy combination of attitudes in children: sentimental adoration and experimental cruelty. Sam Leith astutely points out that for many children owning a pet is their first experience of responsibility. It also opens their eyes to the limits of endurance: though their own cuts and grazes may hurt, there will be a certain height from which Fido, when dropped, will not bounce back.

Leith's book wittily skips through the copious material on moribund domestic animals. It is partly an act of memorial for one of his earliest pets, a hamster called Silky, in whose death he had a hand (or, to be physiologically more specific, a couple of buttocks). It is also a difficult book to classify: part memoir, part real-time autobiography, part quirky Therouxian shuffle through the rituals of pet entombment (overblown and weepy Stateside; decidedly pragmatic and requiring wellies in this country).

We are also treated to the stories of the lives and demises of a number of renowned companions. Thomas Hardy's dog Wessex was violent and irascible in life, though Hardy's wife, Florence, adored him and was convinced he had psychic powers. Hardy refused to write about the pooch when it was alive. However, after his passing, he wrote a typically sentimental elegy in which a ghostly Wessex addresses his former owners. After Leith puckishly points out that the scansion is identical to 'She'll be Coming Round the Mountain', it's impossible to read the poem without this thoroughly inappropriate melodic accompaniment.

Pets, rather than mere animals, have a particularly vivid afterlife. Alexander Pope owned several dogs, all called Bounce, and the documentary record is insufficient to elucidate where one ended and the next began. Rin Tin Tin, the heroic Hollywood stunt dog, went through four different versions. The archetype was so popular that he received over a million fan letters each year, though his studio's workload meant that he was unable to answer any of them.

The original Petra, who allegedly starred on Blue Peter for 14 years, actually died less than two months after her first appearance, upon which the BBC initiated a cover-up of huge proportions. Even if you are going to inter your favoured mog with all the smells and bells (and Leith very kindly includes a litany of the service in an appendix) you can always go out the next day and obtain a pretty similar replacement.

As well as the history, there is a short selection of recipes for getting the most out of the deceased. Leith is taken under the wing of the taxidermy community, which, like most marginal interest activities that take up a lot of time, comprises genial, fanatical weirdos. He also tells the Bildungsroman of his kitten, Henry, whom he acquired during the planning of the book. We are never quite certain that he would not prefer the cat to snuff it and provide further material.

The arch timbre raises a smile more often than not and the wonderfully kitsch illustrations complement a cavort through a subject padded with sentimentality. This drollery might even leave you convinced that the best pet is stuffed and wall-mounted.

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